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See Your Children Leading Healthy Lives? Research Suggests Parents Should Look Harder

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See Your Children Leading Healthy Lives? Research Suggests Parents Should Look Harder

By Kj Dell’Antonia July 9, 2015 12:55 pmJuly 9, 2015 12:55 pm

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Credit Illustration by Abigail Gray Swartz

Are our children really leading the healthy lives we think they are?

In recent weeks, research studies have shown that our preschoolers aren’t very active in preschool, and that young dancers do little actual dancing during their dance classes. Other studies show a similar lack of activity during other activities: children playing organized sports are often “on the team but off the field” and teenagers are active for only an average of 16 minutes during their physical education classes. And a new survey shows that 75 percent of parents tell questioners that their children are getting “enough” active play time — but in the same survey, only 41 percent of parents say their child participates in active play daily.

Many of us aren’t seeing the full picture when it comes to our children’s health. I’ll call myself out: My children (who are 13, 11, 9 and 9) eat a lot of healthy foods, like fruits, vegetables and whole grains. They also eat a lot of unhealthy foods, like chips and cookies. They’re active, from organized sports to outdoor activities and chores, and they also watch grotesque amounts of television if unmonitored on the weekends.

I am their parent, and can, of course, turn off the television and stop buying the junk food. But unless I stop and look and count, really count, the minutes and the calories, it’s all too easy for me to weigh the positives more than the negatives and tell myself that we’re achieving a healthier balance than we really are.

Deceiving myself in this way is convenient, like those snack foods that mean I won’t be standing over someone nagging him into cleaning up the mess he made while cooking, or scrambling to put together lunches after four children decide on cheese and cold cuts for an after-school snack. It’s also easier — once that TV goes off — everyone wants me to drive them to a friend’s or find them some sandpaper for a project or better yet, “play a game with me.”

Convenient, easy — and troubling.

It’s no surprise that parents would tend toward overestimating activity and underestimating calories in our children. It’s what we do for ourselves: diners in fast-food restaurants regularly underestimate not only the calories their children are consuming, but also those in their own meals , and we’re poor at estimating how much exercise we get daily.

“It’s very hard to be aware of your activity,” said Dr. James F. Sallis, distinguished professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego, and an author of the research showing that students in dance classes spend only about a third of their time in moderate to vigorous physical activity. “Especially if you’re not used to much movement, any activity seems like a lot, so we overestimate the time it takes to walk up a flight of stairs or to the store.”

As adults, many of us have found a solution to this gap between what we think we’re doing and what’s really going on in apps and gadgets that help us monitor our meals and movement. A number of studies have proven the adage that what is measured gets managed: keeping a daily food log helps people to lose weight; wearing a fitness tracker encourages people to move more. I do both of those things for myself, but for my children, I rely on my impressions, not data, and that leaves plenty of room for error.

We may overestimate the amount of physical activity our children are engaged in partly because we know it’s important, and we want to get it right — but there are more barriers than ever before to keeping children moving.

“Even in just the last 10 years, things have changed dramatically,” says Steve Ettinger, an expert in children’s fitness who works with the Let’s Play initiative. “There has been such a huge shift in fitness and activity and play in general. Parents are becoming more responsible for having kids play or letting them play because they have to be with them, or pay for a program, or pay someone to be with them. I think in your mind you think they are getting enough exercise, or you know you want them to, but you haven’t figured out how to get them to the point where they are getting enough play.”

With children, especially young children, “it seems impossible that they’re really sedentary, but when you add it all up it’s not as much really active time as we think they’re getting,” said Dr. Pooja Tandon, a member of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, assistant professor at the University of Washington and the lead investigator on the research that found that preschoolers are active for only a remarkably small part of a 10-hour-long day in child care. “We need to step back and look at how kids are really spending their days.” And we need to examine what they’re really eating as well, even if we are well aware of their place on the growth charts.

Older children and teenagers can be engaged in the process of monitoring how much they eat and how much they move. Many enjoy gadgets like pedometers and other fitness monitors (younger children can enjoy a simple pedometer too), and can think about how much they really move in a dance class or sports practice and try to plan more active time.

With screen time, more measurement may also lead to change. Most children are aware that too much screen time isn’t considered healthy. When I take my own children to their pediatrician, they heartily resist being honest about how much television they watch on weekends. (There’s a form they’re expected to fill out.) If I set up a way to force them to fully acknowledge that time, I am quite certain it would drop.

The eating piece presents more of a challenge, especially for our daughters. Mothers fear the fine line many women walk between being aware of what we eat, and becoming obsessive about it. Sally Sampson, founder of the nonprofit ChopChop Kids, the publisher of ChopChop magazine, a quarterly publication dedicated to reversing and preventing childhood obesity, reminds me by email that the focus should never be on calories.

Encourage kids to eat less processed food and instead to eat more food that is an ingredient itself (clementines) or food that is made from scratch (dips). It’s the rare teenager who wants to monitor himself. The best thing to do is to offer healthy options at home so they are less inclined to run to the store and buy junk, supplement with healthier food, and offer them the ingredients to cook at home — this way they begin to understand what is in their food.

Parents have excellent intentions when it comes to our children’s health. But too often, we go through the right motions (like signing them up for sports, limiting screen time to certain days of the week and serving healthy meals) without paying enough attention to whether our efforts are bringing the expected results, or teaching our children to consider those results for themselves. “We spend a lot of time worrying about whether we’re setting our kids up for academic success,” Dr. Tandor said. “We need to do better in setting them up for success in this area as well.”

About

We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more